well back to the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour while republicans may still control the house democrats did pick up a number of seats in the in the in that in that chamber but what happened across the united states in twenty three and the prevented even more democrats i mean elected on tuesday and i remember sitting around for hours as a child playing monopoly trying to take away money and property from everyone else well look around you because the global economy has become one big game of monopoly and it's a game is dragging us into economic collapse all explain why and how it's an

ideology. in the best of the rest of the news president obama won on tuesday but that doesn't mean voter suppression efforts by republicans were not affected a heart research study found that democratic voters and minorities in particular face much much longer lines in waiting times to vote than white republican voters only nine percent of romney supporters said they waited thirty minutes or more to vote on election day but sixteen percent of obama supporters nearly double were forced to wait more than a half hour looking at demographics only nine percent of white voters also said that they had waited more than thirty minutes to vote but twenty two percent of african-americans and twenty four percent of latinos waited longer than thirty minutes these long lines were particularly on display late into the night in voter

suppression states like virginia ohio and florida the media called the race just after eleven pm tuesday but it could have been much earlier in the night without these restrictions to voting in democratic air. he is plain and simple republicans have rigged an election system that makes it much easier for white republicans to vote and the president called them out on this in his victory speech tuesday night . i want to. participate in this lunch. whether you voted for the very first run. one of the very very low. by the way we have to fix. but there's an even bigger story from election night that we should consider as well and that's this well it was indeed a big night for democrats should have been even bigger they should have won back the majority in the house of representatives as well as legal reporter in mill hisor at think progress notes of the total votes cast and counted in u.s.

house races around the nation democrats received more than a half million more votes than republicans despite all the voter suppression efforts in pennsylvania for example president obama won by five points but democrats only got five of that state's eighteen congressional districts same in virginia where obama won yet democrats only won three of eleven house districts and the same in florida why because in two thousand and ten when republicans took power in many state legislatures they gerrymandered the heck out of their states isolating and neutralizing huge regions of democratic voters as well pennsylvania's gerrymandered districts look like it doesn't look like a state that president obama won by five points tuesday but thanks to republican efforts before the election congressional districts were carved up to benefit republicans and with a five four decision the hard right extremists on our supreme court let them get away with it despite it clearly being

a violation of the first and fourteenth amendments by discriminating against minority voters so the american people voted last night or night before last for democrats to get thanks to this sort of gerrymandering. they're getting another republican controlled house of representatives let's bring in my pet my pap and tonio attorney and i was to ring of fire radio welcome back. i'm great i hope you're well tonight. everything's fine on the ok and some good results from the election let's talk first about voter suppression democrats won big but what sort of effect do you think that these efforts by the republicans to restrict the vote at on the election well fortunately this election it didn't it didn't interfere with the outcome but what it did is it it left in the minds of the american voters especially the folks that had to wait in those lines for six and seven hours especially those people it caused them to lose faith in the process of democracy and that's what happens when you have this type of thing that occurs you know they

may come out of there and say yeah i did get a chance to vote but they know they waited seven hours and then ride across the tracks or ride across the bridge the affluent white voter waited fifteen to twenty minutes and so there's nothing lost on this obama needs to do something immediately about this not wait to close to the next election cycle this is a very very serious affront to democracy and when you really see where you really saw it tom was when the foreign press if you care if you followed the foreign press on this and they had people over there watching it they said we see the disparity it looks like a reemergence of jim crow. and in fact it is very much as and one of the things that has been just making me crazy i'm finding myself yelling at the television is the the corporate media the mainstream media is insistence on using the frame the republicans lost because of changing demographics yes there are

more people of color voting but it it to be very clear to me i mean bill clinton took the black vote hugely also it wasn't because his skin. it is well pigment and he's about as you know the white guy as you can get it seems to me that this was actually a ballot use election and people were voting their values but when when these republicans and these commentators say oh well it's the changing demographics it's kind of like code for home or black people voted or brown people couldn't shouldn't have that your thoughts on that it is the latest scare tactic tom it's what keeps the republican base in gauged it's win when you have bill o'reilly talking about that the people voted for obama because they want things that women want things and minorities want things and that's why they voted for obama or when you hear the other eggheads talking about the idea that it was purely a racial divide and that we are now outnumbered there is some truth to that when

you have when you have their own party saying look we can no longer be the party of male stale in frail we have to change that's the truth but to say that this election was purely a product of demographic shift is absolutely wrong in another four years it will be in if they keep talking like this in another four years they'll have little or no chance to ever make a meaningful change the that will include these people that today they're critical of karl rove today said the reason the the republicans a is come up with excuse number forty seven now. he's got against russia from these people that he hustled hundreds of millions of dollars out of i'm sure he skimmed a fair amount off for himself off the top but he said that president obama suppressed the vote with negative campaigning you're your thoughts on that well karl rove has always been the master tom if you recall all the way back the kerry election he's the master of taking

a talking point that works against him turning its own its head and making it work against his opponent right now call rove is under heavy heavy pressure the. billionaires are now asking seriously asking questions if you follow these stories you have freeze saying the guy they gave up one hundred million dollars and i'd like to know where the money with it and they're actually asking they're asking cole rove how much of it did you take we and what it what it what i mean by that he's entitled under the contract or the arrangement it has to take some percentage both on the front of the deal of the hundred million dollars and on the back when he places the ad this is been a money issue for call rove when you saw him burn down on air on fox news it was because he realised he had gone to people like adelson in freeze and said listen he scared the hell out of tom he said if we don't win now we'll never win again we're all in and he scared him to death talked about the demographic change that's taken

place in unless they win they'll never win again he actually scared them and they came up with three hundred four hundred million dollars worth of money and and now they're asking the question coral what did you do with the money it's a very tough question that he has the answer he's in or he's under big big pressure right now he may be yesterday's news well and shelly adelson he's been investigated by the by the justice department right now i mean this is this is just like you know jimmy hoffa given the half million bucks to richard nixon in fifty nine sixty to stop the sun valley land investigation and then when nixon didn't win the election in sixty the first thing bobby kennedy did was reinitiate that investigation and it's just it's like whoa it and i think tom you know he's worried you know what we don't do democrats are so afraid to go ahead and pull the trigger sometimes we have them on the run we had coal rove we had him we've had call rove to where he could have been indicted when at least two occasions we had rumsfeld

during the iran contra event but we let him go we had those we had all of those war hawks during the iran contra event. but we let him go we have a tendency to say let's let him go this time and maybe they'll change the truth is they never change karl rove will never change and if we have a chance to go back and say listen we want investigations we want to keep up the investigation of adelson all these billionaires who wanted to buy their way out of investigation they didn't succeed and now we need to continue putting pressure on them there needs to be some people that are made an example of color over one of them yeah absolutely gerrymandering your thoughts on it and what's going on in florida actually you're in florida right now first i'm curious today just a few hours ago mitt romney conceded florida but we still don't have numbers is this is this a remnant of the jeb bush katherine harris voter suppression efforts that got put

on steroids by rick scott it's something we feel like we always have to do in florida rick scott set out to make this process as confusing as he possibly could and as you point out one thing he did as he did it with jeremiah entering gerrymandering is care is care is carried out for a very single purpose and is to make sure that your political opponent can never be reelected it's almost always racially discriminatory there's never a high ground reason for it it's simply a way for a state governor and state legislators to to prevent the support of their political opponent it prevents them from having a voice on its face as you've already pointed out it's a violation of the first amendment violation of equal protection if you take a look at it and understand it really the intricacies and you look at some of the old cases it's a violation of due process when you really drill down but the politicians in black robes at the supreme court level that used to be supreme court judges but now are simply politicians in black robes they had

a chance to do something it something with it in the virus decision instead of five four decision they said no we know that it has potential be discriminatory and yes this may have been discriminatory but we're not. going to take any action if you compare that court that very court with what we saw happen with the warren court in the warren court what you saw is in the riddle's case go back and look at the look at the analysis in the riddle's case they said most of the time when we see gerrymandering it's simply to discriminate and that's exactly what happened and there are a lot on constitution bipap and tonio really an analysis thanks so much for being with us tonight thank you. good to see. coming up life in america right now is one big game of monopoly what happens if that game comes to a crushing end and everyone even the corporations go bankrupt explain in tonight's daily take.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything

you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom hartman welcome to the big picture. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a donor. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about my views are on our through you know what kind of my terrorist cells in your neighborhood all want to give us a defeat terrorism the olympics and the christian point you. can see your book is going to. get you know the corporate media distract us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm happy martin and we're

going to break that. it's thursday let's get geeky on man's best friend so here's a question for all you dog lovers and owners out there when you take your dog somewhere new and unfamiliar what does he or she do it probably scan the environment and then seem unsure of what's going on and what to do next right and then does your dog turn to you almost looking to you for directions and guidance well a team of psychologists the university of milan italy studied dog's behavior in new and unfamiliar environments and discovered that they're quite similar to the

behaviors of young children in unfamiliar environments it now appears the likely young children dogs use something called social referencing which involves using another person's perceptions and interpretations of a situation or environment to help yourself understand that situation or environment better the psychologist took an oscillating fan and attached plastic streamers to it the sound that the fan made with the streamers flapping and moving back and forth was meant to represent something that a dog might find as worrisome next the researchers had to determine if this level of uncertainty would cause social referencing in the docs so they brought the dogs into the room with the fan and the dogs were allowed to roam free while the experiment was explained to their owners if the fans weren't moving the dogs roamed around without looking at their owners but if the fan was in the room and moving the dogs to middle east ept into the room and then the majority of them looked at their owner and then back at the fan they kept looking at the owner in the back of

the fan looking for the owner to give them an interpretation of the meaning of the fan to tell them what if any danger it possessed. after identifying that the dogs did in fact look to their owners for guidance about the fan that accept was to see if the owner's emotions toward the fan were affected arcs and as it turned out the dogs were incredibly sensitive to their owners reactions if the owner showed displeasure with the fans dogs basically froze where they were and didn't move if the owners didn't show displeasure with the fan the dogs continue to roam around and go about their business and while the researchers didn't address this the logical question asked next is whether all animals at least those that are pets use social referencing that's where louise and my cat hagan's comes in areas squaring off with goo selenium goose who lived in the back back of our home when we lived in the land of river well higgins' was a feral cat who was locked in a room in a frat house because no one knew how to deal with them he survived by drinking

water dripping from a bathroom shower and eating the food that was available in the frat house pizza and chips and because of his server awnings and his survival instincts he became very mean he would attack just about anyone after louise and i got him we had to wear thick actually we had to wear leather gloves and we came in the room because it would try to attack us but over time hagan saw that both we and the environment that he was in were not a threat took a couple years actually but he warmed up to us and he still goes crazy over pizza potato chips it's quite possible that since we weren't treating our living conditions as a threat hagan's learned over time not to treat them as a threat either by watching us so what does all this research new research mean while the research suggests that dogs and maybe other types of pets like cats and other animals act like babies and infants and look to those in power like parents or owners to help them interpret new and unfamiliar situations and events of course not every pet or dog is going to look up to their owner for example if seamus the

dog were still alive i'm sure he wouldn't step foot on the other car to matter how comfortable mitigate it look. let's face it if your opponent in monopoly scoops up boardwalk park place north carolina avenue pacific avenue both utilities and the four railroads that's game over the other players all of whom have been relegated to mere consumers instead of property owners will slowly go bankrupt having to pay higher and higher costs for rents services utilities transportation and having no income eventually

one player has all the money and the losers have to clean up the board game and put away but let's assume the monopoly game doesn't and let's assume the broke players keep rolling the dice and keep going around the board essentially keep living their lives desperate and broke using their credit cards and their home lines of credit to stay in the game maybe they end up in jail if they're lucky they land on baltic avenue and can afford to spend a night in the slums meanwhile the oligarchy who owns everything can no longer collect any income other players can't afford to pay a rat they can't pay utilities they can't ride the railroads eventually without consumer spending money even the monopoly oligarchy goes broke his properties and business disappear in this case firs and suddenly everyone is broke that's what monopolies version of economic collapse looks like and it's very similar to what global economic collapse of the real world looks like to. now put the monopoly

board away and consider this researchers in zurich switzerland it found that there are roughly forty three thousand trans national corporations that basically dominate the global economy of those forty three thousand corporations there are about thirteen hundred companies only a thousand three hundred they control eighty percent of all the global revenues of all the transnational corporations on the planet now take that a step further of those thirteen hundred core companies there are only a hundred and forty seven companies which all have interlocking boards or ownership that control forty percent nearly half of all the wealth in the entire transnational corporate network that means one percent of trans national own forty percent of the world's business well in other words the global one percent has its own one percent. this is similar to

a monopoly situation in which you are just one player owns forty percent of the board and just like it's game over for a monopoly it's close to game over for the global economy as well right now you can count the number of banks that own half of all the wealth in the u.s. economy on just one hand there are just five of them. and they are the usual suspects goldman sachs j.p. morgan chase wells fargo bank of america and citigroup total assets equal eight point five trillion dollars which is fifty six percent of our entire economy in two thousand and seven we learned the consequences of disproportionate wealth and power concentrated in the hands of just a few companies in one company begins to fail they all begin to fail and when they all fail that's what collapse looks like that's why policymakers labeled the banks too big to fail and bail them out to prevent total collapse but today these banks

are even bigger and thanks to globalization their tentacles are wrapped around the entire world's economy it would just be the united states imploding the next time these giants fall take out much of planet earth itself this is the danger of raw unfettered unregulated laissez faire capitalism this is where the demands for higher and higher quarterly profits take down the company the economy eventually companies begin devouring each other sucking whatever wealth they can from each other this is made easier by deregulation policies and in the one nine hundred eighty s. reagan has tripped off the deregulation mania the michael milken and all these amman a artists all the stuff and free trade policies in the ninety's under bill clinton when he signed the general agreement on tariffs and trades created the world trade organization signed nafta it all opened up the game board for these transnational

corporations to feast on even more industries both in the united states and abroad . out of this the few strong survive and have norman's power to fix prices for consumers the inventors of monopoly were right about what happens when one person ends up owning all the railroads or all the utilities or all the apartment buildings prices go up and to secure even more profits these companies begin extract in wealth from their own workers cutting their salaries and their benefits and like broke monopoly players real world consumers can't afford to pay their mortgages with gas in their car or buy groceries in the game world the corporate masters win but in the real world they eventually lose like the rest of us corporate masters seem to have forgotten they depend on working people for their own survival and now today things are getting really bad this corporatocracy made

up of just over just just over one hundred transactional corp two hundred forty seven they're desperately trying to gather more and more wealth by toppling governments in europe and demanding wealth extracting austerity or what's been referred to the united states in the eighty's as starve the beast this was predicted by bill clinton's former deputy secretary of treasury roger altman back in two thousand and eleven he explained that these corporate forces. oust entrenched regimes were normal political processes could not do so they forced austerity banking bailout and other major policy changes their influence dwarfs multilateral institutions such as the international monetary fund indeed leaving aside and unusable nuclear weapons they have become the most powerful force on earth. the violence on display in greece is a consequence of the monopoly end game the world economy is in right now no matter how much austerity the nations like greece spain and your and the rest of europe

endure these corporate masters will be unsatisfied in they'll demand ever more they'll take their harvesting machines to germany the u.k. and eventually the united states in fact they've already begun until eventually they've destroyed the one thing that keeps their own hearts beating working people that's when collapse happens as the researchers in zurich have discovered with actual data we're all living in a functional oligarchy today with just a handful of corporations all of which are wealthier and more powerful than most sovereign governments sucking whatever remaining wealth they can out of the rest of us and just like how the oil industry is willing to suck the last trillion dollars of oil out of the ground with no plans about what to do and it's all gone these corporate masters are willing to suck the last wealth out of the middle class without any plans about what to do when their consumers disappear we all need to wake up to this economic reality before we're all dragged toward collapse if not

the mess will be a lot bigger to clean up the just a few scattered dice than bowls and a chance card. and that's the way it is thursday november eighth two thousand and twelve for more information on any of the stories we covered visit our website at. www dot org. show. dot com big picture also check out our two you tube channel. also there are all the different ways you can send us your feedback is sure to join us tomorrow night for an in-depth discussion on climate change the rise extreme weather events and. begins with you get out there get active tag your it sort of.

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